First Week in Oregon City: Transfer 4, Week 1‏

Hey y’all! Sorry about last week. Transfers are always really weird
when it comes to moving and sending emails and stuff, but here I am
now!

So I got transferred to Oregon City which is basically right next door
to Milwaukie. Oregon City is a smaller town than Milwaukie, which I
really like. Apparently there are a lot of Hispanics here, and we have
been staying pretty busy and gotten to talk to a lot of people.
Luckily we don’t have to start over because there is a lot of work
here.

So my comp is Elder Buhler (Like Ferris) and he’s a cool guy. I’ve
known him for a while because we went on exchanges, but now we’re
actually comps. He’s a good kid and a hard worker, but he’s very
easily excited and he has a lot of energy. His Spanish is good because
he lived in Mexico for like 5 years. But we don’t have as much in
common as me and Kreitel.

About our week, because it was a wild one. So, I have been here a
couple times on pday (I don’t know if you remember, but we would hang
out with the OC Spanish elders a lot a couple months ago) and so I
kinda know my way around and I have met one or two of the members. So
the stake here has one Spanish branch, called the Mollala branch. So
there are two sets of elders in the branch, we’re here in Oregon City,
and one out in the sticks in Mollala. So the area is geographically
bigger, and the branch has more people in it, but there are more
Hispanic and they are less Americanized than in Milwaukie. It’s weird
to explain, but let me try to describe. So, in Milwaukie, our branch
president was an American that learned Spanish on his mission and ur
counsellors were Hispanics but they were very Americanized and all
preferred to speak English over Spanish, but here, almost everybody is
very unAmericanized and only speaks Spanish. Last Monday, we went down
to Mollala to meet the branch president and he’s AWESOME. He doesn’t
hardly speak English, but he’s SO funny. When we went over to their
house they told me that they play this game of chance all the time
where there’s someone who thinks of a number and they go around with a
small shot of water and the people have to guess the random number and
if they guess it then the person splashes them. But they really just
wanted to splash me so they didn’t actually guess a number and just
got me wet. But we played a couple more rounds and it was fun.

And we have been visiting the people here and I have pretty much been
speaking Spanish the whole time because Elder Buhler and I have been
trying to speak it a lot more and we use it a lot with members and
investigators. My Spanish has been seriously getting so much better
since I’ve been here. AND WE HAVE BEEN GETTING AUTHENTIC MEXICAN FOOD
EVERY DAY AND ITS AWESOME.

But yeah. On Tuesday we met with an investigator who’s an old guy and
his grandson walked in with a Grim Reaper-ese necklace on that like a
super evil Catholic idol that all the cartels worship and stuff.
Apparently he was just wearing it because he thought it was cool, but
you could definitely feel the darkness and the evil that was there,
and it really creeped us out a little. But we started talking about
the gospel and the Book of Mormon and he eventually took it off but it
was definitely a weird experience. We’re gonna go back tomorrow.

We also met with a lady from Nampa, Idaho who is visiting one of our
members and she is SUPER golden. We taught her two lessons this week
and they went really well. She’s like super ready. She’s gonna get
baptized, (I’m calling it) so it kinda stinks we can’t baptize her, but
at least we taught her and planted a seed. Totally counting it as one
of my baptisms.

For New Years, we went over to a family’s house and we thought we were
just going over for dinner, but they ended up inviting like two other
Mexican families and it was a party. We had Mexican food and a festive
Mexican party drink. I have been eating so many tortillas and I love
it.

And other than that we have just been knocking on doors. But we’re
currently living with a set of English elders right now because they
don’t have an apartment and it’s a lot like my first transfer. It
really kinda stinks at first and I had a bad attitude, but it’s been
fun to hang out with them and we play card games and stuff.

Well the other English elders were living with are Elder Hansen and
Elder Carl. Elder Hansen came out with me and I like him a lot. He’s
from Utah, and he’s a cool guy. Classic country boy. He was a dairy
farmer and a big hunter so we’ve been talking and he’s a cool and
funny guy. We get along really well together. Elder Carl is a guy from
New Hampshire that really likes computers and programming and robotics
and stuff.

Yesterday was Sunday and it snowed here. Not a lot, but we woke up
to about half an inch and you would have thought the second coming was
happening. They cancelled all the sacrament meetings and we couldn’t
drive anywhere so we were stuck in the apartment all day. It sucks. I
have cabin fever. So yesterday we sat around and played card games and
such with the English elders. I also got an ink pen Browning deer
tattoo since we were stuck here all day. I figured it would make all
y’all at home proud. It’s dope.